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This notion that you should spend the first 30 years of your life figuring out what you want to do is a pretty recent one. Nobody ever questioned a 14 year old blacksmith's apprentice. I think for most of human history you just did pretty much whatever your father did.

It's not like the kids are being forced to go into this school. If you graduate at 18 and decided you don't want to be a programmer that's still plenty of time to do something else and having some knowledge of programming is going to be useful in just about any field.

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Nobody ever questioned a 14 year old blacksmith's apprentice. I think for most of human history you just did pretty much whatever your father did.

I'm a little confused by your post, because the tone seems to suggest that this is a good thing.

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I think it's good that people have more options than they used to. But for the vast, vast majority of people, their career will not be the fulfillment of some life-defining purpose, and trying to treat it as such is going to lead to disappointment.

Basically, I'm saying that it's ok if what you do for a living is not an all-consuming passion. I know if you're doing a startup, there's a good chance that it is, but there are other ways to lead a satisfying life besides through your job.

It's not so much that working towards a career is good, but I don't think it's the unmitigated disaster that some comments here are making it out to be.